The Belltower

More often than anything else, my aspiring jazz students want to work on soloing. “How do I solo over this tune?… or that tune?” Soloing in jazz is certainly a tricky endeavor for sure. I work on it all the time. What I find most interesting is the students that want to become better soloists usually need the most work on their comping/ or chord vocabulary. What is even more interesting is this type of information (common chord voicings for guitar) is SO easy to come by. A quick search on Youtube or a short drive to the local music store can yield enough chord voicings to make your head spin, and yet aspiring jazz students don’t spend the time to works this stuff out on the guitar. Well, for those of you willing to do the work, I’ve found a great instructional video: Fareed Haque’s Jazz Comping Survival Guide.

I’ve been a big fan of Fareed’s playing since the early 1990′s. If you aren’t familiar with his playing, you should check him out. He’s a master a several styles, but it’s his jazz playing that really knocks me out. This instructional video (you can find it on the Truefire site) is the best presentation of this material I’ve ever seen on the internet. No complicated theory to digest. It’s a very simple approach based on using guide tones. The beautiful thing here is that this type of study is exactly what every guitarist is looking for when they come to my office and ask me if I can help them become a better soloist. Mastering the guide tones allows you to pick the best sounding notes of the chord, AND these notes move smoothly (either by half step or whole step) to the best sounding notes of the next chord in any progression. This is what allows the soloist to get into the “sound” of the chord changes… even where there isn’t anyone playing the harmony behind them. Check out Jim Hall on those Paul Desmond albums where Jim is the only chordal player (Bossa Antiqua is one of these recordings… Take Ten is another). One can always hear the sound of the harmony when Jim is soloing and there’s no piano player! Thanks Fareed for putting this lesson out there.

Hey everyone,
I finally dug out my EP and put it up on Itunes. This is the project I’ve been spending the most time with. We’ve played some great venues over the last year including the late great Momo’s here in Austin and I even played a solo gig in Costa Rica last month. This spring I’ll be playing a bunch close to home: The Satellite Bistro, Central Market on 40th, Austin Airport, and the Hyatt in Lost Pines. These are all fun places to play. Check out my website for dates and times. Come out and check out band in the coming months, and if you do, please come over and say hello. Also, you can purchase the new EP The Belltower Blues Explosion

Wow! It’s been some time since I’ve visited my blog. I’ve been busy, which in my line of work is good. Lots of fun gigs, rehearsals, students all on top of the family stuff that keeps us pretty busy here in Austin.

Honorable mention was a trio date with my buddy and saxophonist Ponder East and bassist Chris Thomas. Chris plays in the Brian Blade Fellowship Band. He’s a super nice guy and a fantastic player. Ponder and I both agreed that Chris’ groove was a smooth as the glide of a 1972 Cadillac El Dorado at 35mph back in it’s day!

Ponder and I took our working jazz quartet into the studio in April to record some lesser known standards and a few of my originals. The group included Terry Bowness on B3 and Aaron Lack on drums. We’re hoping to have the CD out this fall. Also, a big thank you to all the people that came out to the Elephant Room for the tribute to Wes Montgomery. We had a great time and it was a really great experience getting all that music together. I’m already thinking about another tribute gig for my other guitar hero Grant Green. Stay tuned…

My blues/ R&B group, now titled The Chris Bell Group has been working more and more and things seem to be settling in regards to the personnel and the arrangements. It a fun group and I get to sing and explore all the music that started me on the guitar like BB King and T-Bone Walker as well as my present influences: Dr. John, Ray Charles, and Snooks Eaglin. Aaron Lack holds down the drum chair in the Chris Bell Group while bass whisperer Ed Friedland works his magic. What a rhythm section. You have to hear it to believe it. We’ll be at Momo’s in July for a couple of trio gigs. Check out my calendar for the details and if you’re at the gig, come up and say hello. Be well.

I just finished a busy week that included a day at the Congress House, where we recorded 9 tracks for Shane Pitsch and the Smokestack Review’s first CD. Shane’s got some great tunes and an excellent band (if I do say so myself) which includes 9 people. Shane sings and plays trumpet while the rest of the group consists of: Aaron Lack on drums, Kyle Clayton on bass, Nick Litterski on keys, Raul Vallejo on trombone, Ponder East on tenor sax, Kieth Fiala on lead trumpet and Akina Adderly on background vocals. His stuff could loosely be described as southern R&B, but I usually tell people it’s a mixture of Delbert McClinton and Leon Russell. With such a large band, it takes some planning and organization to make sure things go smoothly on the bandstand and Shane really has it together. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a gig where the charts are mess and it just results in a mediocre performance. So here it is….
Singers and band leaders. Get your book together. The better the charts the better the performance. Make it as easy as possible for your sidemen (or sidewomen). IF they’re relaxed, they’re going to play better which means YOU sound better, YOU get more gigs, and the better musicians want to play in YOUR group. Thanks Shane. Keep up the good work my friend.

Here are some photos from the session.

Mr. Aaron Lack on the drums, Nick Litterski and Kyle Clayton doing business between tunes, Nick in the recording pit. I had to include a picture of my weapon of choice. My 1987 Gibson 335 just recently back from Ed Reynolds shop and it plays incredibly well. Shane made some great split pea soup as well.

Filmmaker Elizabeth Spear has put together a bunch of videos that are now on Youtube (and soon to be website) for your viewing pleasure. She did a great job and included some interviews where I talk about my group and our sound as well as some solo acoustic performances of two of my original tunes “Millionaire” and “Workin’ Fool.” All of this has really helped the traffic on my Facebook page as well. Thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback. You guys rule!
For those of you who have been watching the guitar lessons on my Youtube page, I am planning on adding a few more now that we’re through the holiday craziness. Keep a look out for those. All for now. Happy New Year to everyone.

I finally got around to finishing the “first chapter” in my online lesson series “Melodic Freedom: Soloing in jazz without scales.” As I mentioned in my last post, I’m trying to avoid a lot of theoretical discussion concerning chord scale relationships. Theory is a powerful tool and I would bet that a great majority of jazz artists are well aware of the relationships between the notes in their melodic lines and the chords that are sounding at any moment in time. I’d just prefer to present it in this way. Please feel free to write me with any comments at belltowerbooking@gmail.com.

The first lesson demonstrates a couple of melodic ideas to be played over minor 7 chords. Lesson 2 shows how to use those same melodic ideas over major 7 chords. Lessons 3 and 4 put all that stuff to work and show how these melodic ideas can be used to play over major and minor ii- V- I progressions. As many of you know, ii-V-I progressions are everywhere in the standard jazz repertory.

I started posting free jazz guitar lessons on my Youtube page last week.  My thought here, is that there is so much information out there about the theoretical aspects to playing jazz that a lot of aspiring players forget about simple things like melody and swing.  My goal is to give students something to play and then encourage them to go out and play it in a tune.  I just saw an interview with Scott Henderson (great player and educator) on Youtube the other day where he was asked about improvising or something and his comment was something to the effect of…

Hey, anybody who is out there playing this music well, spent a lot of time transcribing the masters.

My guess is that Scott feels as many of us do, that jazz is a language and in order to play it well you first learn to imitate, then assimilate, then finally innovate.  When I arrived at the Berklee College of Music, I was already making my living as a guitarist.  I could play all my scales in all the positions, but when I sat down and played a tune with my teacher he said, “Well, your playing a lot of guitar but your not playing a lot of music.”  From there we just tarted learning Wes Montgomery solos.  Then it was on to George Benson and Grant Green.  It wasn’t until I learned to play ( and I mean play them with only my teacher playing the chords, not just playing along with the recording) did I start to hear the sound of jazz.  It was then that I started to play “jazz” on the guitar as opposed to playing “jazz guitar.”

My friend Michael Scaccia teaches English in the LASA program at LBJ and decided to have his students read “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin.  It’s a fantastic short story about two African-American brothers growing up in NYC in the ’50′s.  The story focuses on their relationship and the challenges they face trying to understand one another. (One brother is a math teacher and the other is a jazz musician.) Michael thought it would be a good idea to have some professional jazz musicians come perform and speak to the students, about 120 in all.  I had the good fortune of playing and answering questions with two of my favorite players here in Austin: Ponder East on sax and Michael Stevens on bass.  We played a few tunes and spoke briefly about what it is like to have a life in music.  Hearing my colleagues speak about their relationship to music was really inspiring to say the least.  We closed out the hour and a half presentation by playing a basic jazz-blues progression while Ponder had the entire student body vocalize call and response “riffs” over the accompaniment Michael Stevens and I were providing.  I think the kids really enjoyed it and I think they might get more out of the short story because of it.  Thanks again to Michael Scaccia and the LASA students at LBJ for having us, and for supporting jazz in your community.

I just picked up my new Fulton-Webb D’lux 18 amp yesterday.  Wow!  Sounds fantastic.  Here is the website. Check it out. http://www.fultonwebbamps.com/deluxe18.php .  Steve and Bill have really done a fantastic job.  As my friend Jonas pointed out, these amps allow you to hear the sound of your guitar… not the sound of the amp, and it’s incredibly responsive to how hard or soft you might be playing at the moment.  I took it to a fancy restaurant for a mellow jazz gig last night and the tone at low volume was round and clean, but yesterday in the studio I had it singing with the 335 and it sounded like Cream “Wheels of Fire.”  Nice work gentlemen.

I just finished teaching at The Austin Jazz Project, a one week jazz camp for high school musicians from the Austin area.  We had a great group of kids and they really worked hard all week.  It’s no wonder they completely knocked it out of the park at the concert on Friday night!  Our song list included Take the A Train, I Can’t Get Started, Norwegian Wood, Red Clay,  Old Lady Walk a Mile and a Half (a traditional calypso), and Clifford Brown’s Blues Walk.  The camp focuses heavily on improvisation and the concert included a lot of great soloists thanks to a great staff: Dr. Shane Pitsch (brass), Ponder East (woodwinds, piano), Aaron Lack (all things percussive) and I covered guitar and bass.  I’m already looking forward to next year.